​Tomorrow, Bethesda’s latest RPG epic Fallout 4 lands here in the UK on PS4, Xbox One and PC. The follow up to 2008’s Fallout 3 (Unsurprisingly) is a game that has been well… shall we say, somewhat anticipated. Fallout 4 is set to be this year’s hottest release, much like Skyrim was in 2011. Bethesda games are no joke; they are massive games with tons of content that keep fans entertained for months after initial release. There are still parts of Skyrim that most people haven’t even seen in the four years since it came out. And come tomorrow, we will know if Fallout 4 lives up to its lineage.

However, we can’t really talk about Fallout 4 until it’s in our hands. So, it’s time to talk pre-orders. And oh sweet lord, was the Pip Boy Edition a disaster on all fronts for UK Fallout fans. The Death of Video Games makes it triumphant return, with UK retailer GAME all set to be tore a new one.
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So, GAME, does your handling of pre-orders spell the Death of Video Games? Or is it a problem with pre-orders and special editions in general?

Special Editions of videos games are certainly nothing special at this point. You can buy or re-order a video game that comes packaged with additional digital and physical goodies for a premium price. Ordinarily, you’d expect this kind of practice to be in support of the games developers or publishers. However, the practice of selling this stuff has gotten progressively shady and uncertain over the years.
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Let’s start by looking at how special editions have been tainted over the years.

Image Credit: kotaku.com

​Wanting more of a game is certainly not a bad thing. A special edition of a video game is an extension of that idea: pay more to receive more. But where normally this would mean packed-in merchandise, much like Fallout 4’s physical Pip Boy, it works out much easier to pack in digitally downloadable content due to its easier production and distribution. This, you could argue, is just good business. Gamers would like more game for their buck for sure. However, somewhere along the way, publishers decided that this was a route for easy exploitation.

Take Watch Dogs, a thoroughly average game burdened from overhype and a pre-order system so bad it requires a fucking graph to show which editions give you certain content. Look at this shit:

Image Credit: wikipedia.org

It’s horrifying how things have gotten this bad. You’re no doubt wondering, like many of us were at the time, just where this extra content was coming from. Watch Dogs itself suffered from delays around the time of its release, presumably to work on more content. How wrong we were. Sadly, the way special editions tend to work nowadays is by hacking up the full game into chunks to sell off in different editons, at different retailers and on different platforms, meaning it is nigh on impossible to actually play the definitive version of any current gen game.

Case in point, Destiny. I’ve ragged on it before, but lest we forget the hack job that Destiny still is. Destiny claimed to have a huge story that was then later split up into three different DLC packs, meaning it would take over 12 months for Destiny to actually include all of the story it claimed to have since its initial release. On top of that, certain maps, weapons, missions and gear were made exclusive to PlayStation consoles. And of course, it’s special edition came packed in with a number of codes for cut content, including a season pass for the first two packs of DLC, both of which were originally on-disc content, with the ‘codes’ acting as keys to unlock areas already in the code on the disc. Fuck. That.

Image Credit: vrworld.com

This concept reached its logical conclusion with the abysmal Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ‘Augment Your Pre-Order’ system. Before the game was even released, Square Enix thought it fit to have the purchasers decide which arbitrary content they’d like packaged with their games. The catch? Literally everyone in the world would have to pre-order it for it to work. You see, these augments were nothing more than arbitrary barriers. A certain high number of pre-orders would have to be placed before people could even receive their extra content. This was capped off with the promise of a four day early release if everyone and their dog has pre-ordered two copies. As you could expect, this did not take off, and the program was cancelled after very justified outrage. But don’t worry, there’s still a ridiculously expensive physical edition if you can live without those augments. And if you’re stupid.

Okay, we’ve covered why the content of special editions is basically poison, but what of the other ways that they are ruined? What of physical goodies and retailer exclusives?
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Physical goodies are mostly harmless, it must be said. However, they tend to jump the price of any video game into triple figure territory. In the UK, a standard game disc with no additional content will run you about £40. A special edition can run you anywhere between £60 and, are you sitting comfortably? £250,000. I shit ye not. Of course, the yanks have always outdone us, offering a special edition that ran at $1 million. These higher value special editions are of course more gimmick than anything, but any high value mass produced special edition can easily hit the £250-£300 mark without once blushing.

Image Credit: ripten.com

But raising the cost can only help the devs out right? Wrong. More often than not, enhanced physical editions of games only serve to profit the publisher, to line the pockets of core employees or to re-cooperate costs coming from manufacturing the special editions to begin with. This is why in recent years the focus has been on digital content. If a game bombs, then little is lost. Again, business wise, there is a lot of sense to be had, but do you think Call of Duty publishers Activision would be manufacturing actual working night vision goggles to package in with their games if they didn’t think it was going to sell like hotcakes?
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But like most things I discuss here, setbacks are aplenty. Here’s one I had personal grief from: Borderlands 2’s Ultimate Loot Chest Edition. And here we come to GAME, possibly the worst handler of pre-orders I have ever seen.

Image Credit: amazon.com

The Loot Chest first ran into problems when it’s limited run became very sought after. In the UK, it was handled solely by GAME. Literally minutes after it was available, it was sold out. I vividly remember myself and my university housemate getting up early to pre-order our chests. And by gosh did we get them. Then for months, silence. The release date of Borderlands 2 was just on the horizon. And then the chaos started to seep out.

In and amongst all the chatter, Gearbox and 2K said that the demand for the Chest actually outnumbered the amount they could physically make. It was around this time that a number… well, most people who had actually pre-ordered the Chest were having their orders mysteriously cancelled. There was outcry, anger, rage and several thousands of minutes on help lines trying to secure their orders. It was pandemonium. I know because mine was cancelled. GAME cited problems with my bank over why they cancelled my order. I spent the good part of 5 hours on the phone with their help lines trying to fix my order. In the end, it was fixed and the Chest arrived as planned. A number of people didn’t receive their chests and the tales of low production numbers became more apparent. As it turns out, a money down pre-order does still not guarantee you a copy of a certain game. Because these are crazy times we live in. And also because GAME’s archaic system of pre-ordering when a product may not even reach order numbers in apparently a smart business move. Myself and other customers swore never to use GAME to pre-order games again. And we moved on to use Amazon and other services to get our games. And then…

Then Fallout 4’s Pip Boy was announced as a GAME exclusive. And the cycle began again.

Image Credit: neogaf.com

Before this, GAME’s pre-order incentive, despite the whole curbing the market thing, was the Fallout 4 Club. This was touted to customers that they could join an exclusive club in the months leading up to the games release, as well as snag an exclusive t-shirt and collectible bobblehead. The catch? T-shirts were only produced in large and distributed to the first 10,000 orders, bobbleheads were all the same of seven possible designs and distributed to the first 20,000 orders, and the super exclusive Fallout 4 Club? A Facebook fan page. A Facebook. Fucking. Fan page. I. Shit. Ye. Not.
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But despite earlier disappointments, Fallout 4 launches tomorrow. And yet, these earlier disappointments were simply not enough. On Friday, the usual GAME shit show began, as people experienced a slew of horror stories about their orders, only 5 days before the game was due to arrive at their doors. Orders were cancelled, doubled, undercharged, overcharged, sent to wrong addresses, sent to stores for delivery prices, the works. Name something that could go wrong and it did.

And naturally, there was chaos. Customers showed their frustration on social media, through games media and attempted to voice their concerns on the ever-so-exclusive Fallout 4 Club Facebook page (Every time I mention it, it somehow sounds stupider). Aaaand, their posts were deleted. The moderation team at GAME performed ruthless damage control on the page, deleting any new posts discussing any problems with the pro-orders. Out of frustration, those with deleted posts made a separate Facebook page to complain and share horror stories, as well as share what little information GAME were offering as excuses. In time, GAME came to acknowledge their failures with a number of blanket statements (Ironically often sent to the wrong people), whilst mostly fixing the issues raised by the customers, at the expense of a completely destroyed online chat service, call centre lines that were busy for hours on end and a number of in store employees getting seriously harassed.

For all intents and purposes, Fallout 4 has been a PR nightmare for GAME. And rightfully fucking so. GAME have proven time and time again that they cannot handle this kind of launch, and are sketchy when it comes in incentives. And when the proverbial hits the fan, they are quick to shift blame to banks, Paypal and publishers. They are, for a lack of better words, fucking snakes. The idea that a single retailer should be handling a product as large as a video game special edition, which we’ve established is basically full of cut game content and mass produced tat, is archaic. Which is interesting, because so is GAME’s internal infrastructure apparently. This isn’t first time that GAME have completely and utterly flummoxed the release of a huge game and it probably won’t be the last. However, given the high profile nature of Fallout 4, this should hopefully cement the idea of not doing this shit in the future into the minds of game publishers.​

If special editions don’t change, if publishers don’t stop being greedy, if retailers don’t stop being incompetent and if fans don’t stop having expectations, then this cycle will continue. And I could easily foresee this being the Death of Video Games. The over-saturation of multiple special editions into the market, coupled with the hyena-like territorial dividing of who gets what content in their respective platforms and stores is both backwards and barbaric. And quite honestly, I would be happy if GAME went out of business permanently. All in all, the video game market would benefit from this practice simply not existing. None of these practices benefit the customers in many ways, apart from relieving them of their cash and patience closer to the release date of their most anticipated games. And when a system is in place that does not benefit the end user of your product, your product ash failed and it would not exist. This needs to change. Now.

Fallout 4, please be a good game. Otherwise, some your fans may never forgive it.